Re: [eclipse.org-planning-council] Accessibility in the Eclipse IDE...

[Jonah Graham <jonah@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you Wayne. This is an acknowledgment that I (we) have seen this message and we'll figure out what to do next.

Hi fellow planning council members,

This is an important thing to do, I know that, for example, Gerald recently went through and did a bunch of accessibility fixes in CDT and there have been recent discussions on platform-dev mailing lists too.

We should aim to bring this up to participating projects, but in the first instance moving the Wiki entry for Accessibility to a permanent/modern location would be a starting point.

Should this live in Eclipse Platform UI land, or some general location? (I had another recent thought recently that we may want an eclipse-ide organization on GitHub as an entry point for the IDE and having this information in that location would make sense.)

Thoughts? Any volunteers to drive this forward?

Thanks

Jonah

~~~
Jonah Graham (he/him)
Kichwa Coders
www.kichwacoders.com

On Tue, 11 Apr 2023 at 13:58, Wayne Beaton via eclipse.org-planning-council <eclipse.org-planning-council@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Greetings Eclipse Planning Council.

The EMO has received messages from two separate individuals with concerns regarding accessibility in the Eclipse IDE moving forward.

Here's a clip from one of the messages.

I recently learned from a video on the Eclipse Foundation's official YouTube channel, "Towards a modern Eclipse UI: Adding Chromium support to the Eclipse IDE" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_87vJwChNKE), that there are plans to modify the UI of Eclipse. I kindly request that you consider the importance of preserving full accessibility for visually impaired users when implementing these changes.
Introducing a canvas into pages could adversely affect the accessibility of content for screen reader programs used by visually impaired individuals. This is because items inside the canvas are presented as images, rather than distinct components in the window. Given this, it is crucial to comply with the SWT accessibility guidelines and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) v2.0 standards when updating the UI.

The other one was similar, but with this important addition:

Please note that Eclipse is the only IDE that is fully accessible to visually impaired individuals.

The quality of our accessibility support is a critical aspect of the Eclipse IDE for many in our community and an important distinguishing feature.

In a recent related discussion, I referred to the quality of the Eclipse IDE's accessibility support as being both good and bad. Good, in that it basically just works. Bad, in that, because it more-or-less just works, a lot of developers tend to not think about it and there is danger that it can slip off our radar. IMHO, it's important that we keep accessibility on our radar as we explore updates and alternatives in our UX.

To that end, I'm thinking that it would be good if the Planning Council could send a gentle reminder of the importance of maintaining accessibility as a goal to the cross-project community.

It would also be great if somebody could have a look at our accessibility resources (e.g., the Accessibility wiki page) and make sure that they're up-to-date.

In a related note that we regularly get requests for verification that the Eclipse IDE works with one screen reader or another. We also regularly get requests for VPATs; primarily from US government departments and from large organisations that do work with the US government.

Wayne

--

Wayne Beaton

Director of Open Source Projects | Eclipse Foundation

My working day may not be your working day! Please don’t feel obliged to read or reply to this e-mail outside of your normal working hours.

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